This is not only the most geographically removed event at this year’s Brighton Fringe Festival, but also probably the most unexpected. A live sports contest at an arts festival? Hell yeah! The increasing number of Brighton Rockers T-shirts spotted in the city’s streets and pubs is testament to the growing popularity of these local practitioners of “the world’s fastest growing sport” and today’s bout is their third consecutive home sell-out.

Roller derby is a largely all-female full-contact sport. Two teams of five players skate anti-clockwise round an oval track in ‘jams’ lasting up to two minutes each. One player on each team is a ‘jammer’ (indicated by a star on her helmet) and scores a point for each opponent she laps. Meanwhile, the remaining players (one pivot and three blockers per team) speed up, slow down and jostle for position as they attempt to help or hinder the respective jammers.

The Rockers have never lost a bout, but on paper today’s opponents – Leicester’s Dolly Rockit Rollers – are a tough proposition, currently lying adjacent to Brighton in the UK rankings. Indeed, the Dollies are first to put points on the board, but seven consecutive scoring jams for Brighton follow, including a triple grand slam 15 from wiry Rose Bleed, putting the hosts 47-4 up.

It’s a very physical sport – we’re getting bruised ribs just from watching it – with players occasionally bumped so hard they fly off the track and into the laps of the front row of the audience. Both teams have an England international in their ranks; Leicester’s pacy Rogue Runner is their biggest threat, whilst Brighton’s Mighty Mighty Bash puts in a powerful performance, slamming Dollies in all directions.

Whilst Brighton dominate on the track, taking a 90-32 lead into the half-time break, Leicester’s mascots are winning plaudits off it. Anyone used to football mascots based on club nicknames or local history might wonder what a donkey and a dancing banana have to do with Leicester. Things don’t get any clearer when the donkey transforms into a breakdancing penguin for the second half. Derby bouts are themed and today’s anticipates the following weekend’s Diamond Jubilee: the hall is bedecked in bunting and caricatures of the Windsors, and Rockers coach Mass Janeycide is dressed as Her Maj, complete with minion-powered portable throne.

The Rockers have something of a reputation for second half lulls, and Leicester’s hopes rise with 15 points in the first jam. Unfortunately for them, that’s where the lull ends, and Brighton soon build up a commanding lead. The final whistle sounds with the scores at 224-69. The contest is not over, though…

…it’s just beginning, as the players, officials and much of the crowd head back into the city, two hundred strong, to take over a central Brighton beer garden for the after-party. Here, fuelled by copious Jägermeisters, the Rockers and Dollies are pitted against each other in various other contests; from eating doughnuts dangled from fishing rods to limbo dancing, pyramiding, and the frankly best left unexplained ‘bum-coin’.

So which side ‘won’ the after-party? Put it this way: the Brighton Rockers, both individually and as a team, have learned a lot in the two years since roller derby first washed up on the Sussex shoreline. The only thing they’ve yet to learn is how to lose. Long may that continue.

Dolphin Centre, Haywards Heath & Hobgoblin, Brighton – Saturday 26th May 2012
Words By Adam Peters
Photos By Rebecca Cornford